Teaching with Technology: Using Technology to Foster and Assess Student Learning
Sid Meier’s Civilization Video Game to Teach History

In this blog I want to discuss how to use the video game Civilization to engage students, foster learning, and ways to asses learning in a college history courses. Sid Meier’s Civilization or Civ as it is called, is one of many in a series of award winning historical based civilization building games first released in 1991 on a PC platform (Civilization, 2015). The version of the game selected can be closely matched to the type of history course taught as Civ offers many versions of their games. I would also tie the use of Civ technologies to building class wiki pages or building on official Civ Wikia pages.
Civilization has a big community of followers with various groups, including an official Wiki pages that could be an asset to the teaching history with Civilization (Civ Wikia, 2015).

Sid Meir’s Civ is the game I would select for teaching courses like World History, Ancient History, or Western Civilization at the college level. Civ I is an earlier version of Civ so it may cost as low as $10- $25, the investment is far less than a typical college text book. The way Civ works is that students would be building their societies, on various layers and learning about history and the development of societies as they go along.

Civ does not follow any particular historical narrative, not history told from a perspective or voice of the dominant culture. It is more of a game where societies are built along how humans developed and aligned with technological advances (Cruzan, 2015).
What makes Civ idea from my viewpoint is that it helps students understand history, which if far more important than memorizing a bunch of things they could easily look up online later. Students get to engage with the game and each other and as they build their societies, they learn to understand why things happened, what worked and did not work and route memorization is out the window.

Student’s could play the game on their own, or online, in teams to encourage collaboration. I would post a weekly discussion prompt or assign a short essay where students discuss historical accuracy; we could also engage in critical debate about an actual historical event and why it happened the way it did. Perhaps a student tried to change the way a society grew and developed in their game; we could discuss how that alternate history could affect other histories into the future or what really happened in that society and why changing the outcome in the game, wouldn’t change actual historical processes.

We could use our findings to build a class wiki page about our game and world history and what we found out. Alexander (2014) used Civ 5 to teach his Ancient history class and found that the game was useful in teaching broad historical developments over time. Students were required to play the game and most enjoyed it; they were assessed at 15% of their course grade (Alexander, 2014). I would consider making that 25% of the grade, because I would try to incorporate the game into the class more and not try to tie it to a lecture as Alexander (2014) had done. I would likely engage the students in weekly discussions, assign essays so they could and also credit for contributions to the wiki page. I also give great weight to the development of historical thinking and historical literacy and I believe the game would help convey these concepts and help students build these skills.

Video games were once considered to have only entertainment value; an d in many cases dismissed due to the violent themes and activities, however, in recent years we have come to understand how they can improve memory, aid in cognitive function, and problem solving skills (Mendez & Moral, 2015). It is important to match the correct game with the course, the objectives of the course and create appropriate assessments and then ask for and listen to student feedback to improve the course and be creative with revisions and innovative ways to use the game, meet course objectives and engage the students.

References

Alexander, J. (2013.) Civilization and enlightenment: A study in computer gaming and History education, surveying student-players of Civilization IV. The Middle Ground Journal, 6, 1-26. Retrieved from http://resources.css.edu/academics/HIS/MiddleGround/articles/alexander.pdf

Civilization (2015). Sid Meier’s Civilization: Games: Retrieved from http://www.civilization.com/en/games/civilization-i/

Civilization: Official Wikia (2015). Games: Category Page. Retrieved from http://civilization.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Games

Cruzan, N. (2015). How to play Sid Meier’s Civilization. Personal communication on Nov. 11, 2015, Bellingham WA.

Mendez, L & Moral, E. (2015). Research and educational innovation with video games. Electronic Journal of Research in Educational Psychology, 13(2), 211-218.